SOCIALISM CANNOT BE BUILT IN ALLIANCE WITH THE BOURGEOISIE The Experience of the Revolutions in Albania and China Jim Washington, about 1980, USA CONTENTS: INTRODUCTION 1 I CHINA 4 1 “New Democracy” 4 2 Four Classes in Power 6 3 Gradual and Peaceful Transition to Socialism 7 4 Liu Shao-chi and the Right Wing of the CPC 10 5 The Transformation of Industry and Commerce 13 6 The Eighth Congress of the CPC 15 7 The Decentralization of the Economy and the Wage Reform of 1956 18 8 The “Rectification” of the Party 21 9 “Contradictions Among the People” 23 II ALBANIA 26 1 The Democratic Revolution 26 2 Conciliation With or Expropriation and Suppression of the Bourgeoisie? 27 3 The Struggle Against the Titoite Revisionists 29 4 The Consolidation of Socialist Relations of Production 30 5 The Struggle Against the Soviet Revisionists 34 III THE PLA’S CRITIQUE OF “NEW DEMOCRACY” IS CORRECT 38 1 The Popularization of the Theory of “New Democracy” 38 2 Alliances with Sectors of the Bourgeoisie in National-Democratic Revolutions 39 3 The Nature of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the Class Struggle During 42 the Transition to Socialism IV INTRODUCTION TO PART TWO: CLASS STRUGGLE IN SOCIALIST 50 SOCIETY V LEARNING FROM THE CHINESE AND ALBANIAN EXPERIENCES 56 NOTES 58 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 63 INTRODUCTION The seizure of power in China by the Teng Hsiao-ping revisionist clique stunned the com- munist movement in our country. Some organizations displayed their opportunism and hastened to consolidate themselves around the increasingly open reactionary line of the Chinese Com- munist Party. Both the Trotskyites and the Soviet revisionists jumped on new opportunities to prove that their bankrupt lines were “right all along.” But most importantly, the betrayal of first the Russian and then the Chinese revolutions, and the ugly reality of the present-day Russian and Chinese regimes, have aided in the efforts of the bourgeoisie to alienate the working class from communism and weaken the revolutionary movement. All of this points to the need to carefully study the questions of the dictatorship of the prole- tariat and the construction of socialism. Before October 1976 many of us had not paid enough attention to the developments in the class struggle in China, and the tremendous power that the bourgeois forces in China displayed took us by surprise. While there were initial efforts made to expose the bourgeois line of the Teng Hsiao-ping group, the reasons why this group was able to emerge victorious was largely a mystery to us. In February 1979 the Party of Labor of Albania published Imperialism and the Revolution. In this book Enver Hoxha advanced an outline of the PLA’s analysis of the events in China and laid the blame for the degeneration of the Chinese revolution on the line of the CPC’s leader, Mao Tse-tung. Among other things, Enver Hoxha criticized the policy of the CPC towards the nation- al bourgeoisie following the victory of the Chinese revolution in 1949: The revisionist concepts of Mao Tse-tung have their basis in the policy of collabora- tion and alliance with the bourgeoisie, which the Communist Party of China has always applied.... The revolution in China, which brought about the liberation of the country, the creation of an independent Chinese state, was a great victory for the Chinese people, and for the world anti-imperialist and democratic forces. After liberation many positive changes were made in China: the domination by foreign imperialism and big landowners was liquidated, poverty and unemployment were combated, a series of socio-economic reforms in favor of the working masses were carried out, the educational and cultural backwardness was fought against, a series of economic measures were taken for the re- construction of the country ravaged by war, and some transformations of a socialist char- acter were made.... From the adoption of these measures and the fact that the Communist Party came to power, it appeared as if China was going to socialism. But things did not turn out this way. Having “Mao Tse-tung thought” as the basis of its activity, the Com- munist Party of China, which after the triumph of the bourgeois democratic revolution ought to have proceeded cautiously without being leftist and without skipping stages, proved to be “democratic,” liberal, opportunist and did not lead the country consistently on the correct road to socialism. The tendency advocated by “Mao Tse-tung thought” that the bourgeois democratic stage of the revolution had to continue for a long time was kept alive in China. Mao-Tse- tung insisted that in this stage the premises for socialism would be created parallel with the development of capitalism, to which he gave priority. Also linked with this is his the- sis on the coexistence of socialism with the bourgeoisie for a very long time, presenting this as something beneficial both for socialism and to the bourgeoisie. The transition from the bourgeois-democratic revolution to the socialist revolution can be realized only when the proletariat resolutely removes the bourgeoisie from power 1 and expropriates it. As long as the working class in China shared power with the bour- geoisie, as long as the bourgeoisie preserved its privileges, the state power that was estab- lished in China could not be the state power of the proletariat and, consequently, the Chi- nese revolution could not grow into a socialist revolution. The Communist Party of China has maintained a benevolent opportunist stand to- wards the exploiting classes, and Mao Tse-tung has openly advocated the peaceful inte- gration of capitalist elements into socialism. Proceeding from such anti-Marxist concepts, according to which with the lapse of time the class enemies will be corrected, he advocated class conciliation with them and allowed them to continue to enrich themselves, to exploit, to speak, and to act freely against the revolution. As a result of these anti-Marxist concepts about contradictions, about classes, and their role in revolution that “Mao Tse-tung thought” advocates, China never proceeded on the correct road of socialist construction. It is not just the economic, political, and ide- ological and social remnants of the past that have survived and continue to exist in Chi- nese society, but the exploiting classes continue to exist there as classes, and still remain in power.1 There was immediate and widespread resistance in this country to the criticisms that the PLA raised of Mao Tse-tung’s line. The Revolutionary Communist Party (USA) quickly published attacks on the PLA calling it dogmatic and Trotskyite. They took up the task of defending Mao Tse-tung’s views on the united front, alliance with the national bourgeoisie in the socialist stage of the revolution, how to carry out class struggle in the Party and in socialist society in general, and so forth. They claimed that in criticizing the line of Mao Tse-tung on “New Democracy,” the PLA was actually negating the differences between the bourgeois-democratic and the socialist stages of revolution in colonial and semi-colonial countries. They attacked the PLA for maintain- ing that the bourgeoisie did not exist as a class in socialist society, and said that this was tanta- mount to denying the existence of class struggle in socialist society. They pointed to the PLA’s criticisms of the Chinese Cultural Revolution in particular as a sure sign that it opposed the pro- letariat in socialist society. Two outstanding features of the polemics by the RCP were: 1. Their acceptance of the line of Mao Tse-tung as the beginning and end of Marxism, the stand- ard against which all lines are to be judged. The RCP uses Marxist-Leninist theory and the historical experience of the Chinese revolution only to the extent that these agree with the views of Mao Tse-tung. 2. Their ignorance of Albanian history and their refusal to examine even casually the develop- ment of the line and practice of the PLA. They declare that the PLA’s line is dogmatic, ideal- ist, sectarian, bureaucratic, Trotskyite, etc. without bothering to see what the results of that line have been in the practice of the bourgeois-democratic and socialist revolutions in Alba- nia. For the RCP the PLA’s line is incorrect because it contradicts the line and practice of the Chinese Communist Party. This paper examines the development of the lines of the CPC and the PLA as well as the his- tory of the construction of socialism in both China and Albania, focusing on specific questions with specific limitations: 1. The class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is the focus of this paper. This struggle, which determined the course of history in both countries, affected all spheres of so- ciety, but can be seen in the most concentrated way in the struggle for control of the Party, 2 the state, and industry. For this reason, the paper concentrates on these areas and only deals with the collectivization of agriculture in passing, not in a thorough way. This is a great weakness because industry and agriculture are not isolated but connected with each other, as is the peasantry with both the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. 2. The time period covered is between the triumph of the national-democratic revolutions in Al- bania and China (in 1944 and 1949 respectively) and 1957. The major task of both the Alba- nian and Chinese proletariat in this period was the political and economic expropriation of the landlords and the bourgeoisie, the establishment and consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the transition to socialist relations of production.